Saturday Soliloquy: Seeking Sister Peace

Today’s soliloquy isn’t really a soliloquy, and I’m not even posting it on Saturday. Still, I did want to say something.

A couple of years ago, I wrote that “all injustice is bound together, perpetrated by like callousness and lack of compassion.” This is so much truer than I came close to understanding then.

But then, I don’t write these things simply to distress and dismay. I write these things to encourage you to seek truth beyond your comfort zone, the better to begin broadening vulnerable people’s comfort zones.

Right now, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.–among others–bomb parts of Syria under the guise of bringing peace to the country. The Syrian government and its most prominent ally, Russia, fight different contingencies within the country, leading Saudi and Syrian coalitions ever closer to outright warfare with each other.

Many in the U.S. have called for a no-fly zone over Syria. This may sound like a peaceful thing. I would like you to know, via analogy inspired by my two young sons, that it is anything but.

And when the U.S. government tells you it’s in Syria out of humanitarian goodness, I hope you’ll ask yourself, “Really? Why then, are we partnering with Saudi Arabia, which represses women and beheads more people than ISIS? Whose textbooks teach ‘hatred toward people, including Muslims, who do not subscribe to the Wahhabi sect of Islam’?

The USA leaves Saudi Arabia alone, and like you, it doesn’t make much sense to me. Or at least on the surface of things it makes no sense. There’s something more going on there with our relationship with this dreadful country, but I’ve never been able to put my finger on it. I suspect that my elected official could care less about what I want, and cares more about what Saudi Arabia wants. For some reason. That will eventually come to light.

I don’t think our representatives care when it’s just one or two people at a time calling in. If the tides start shifting, though, and more people speak out, they’ll have a hard time justifying their stance.

(While I was immensely disheartened that we just opted to send another billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia, I was heartened by The Intercept’s take. Basically, (1) foreign policy was being addressed by the Senate (which hasn’t happened much in recent years!) and (2) 27 senators voted against the sale. There’s some hope in that.)

I agree about it not making much sense. I mean, I know they’re a strategic partner, but can it just be that? At what point does a “strategic partner” become a liability by their persistent atrocious actions?

I feel like I have a big part of the answer, and it’s an unnerving, terrible one, and I’m not nearly at a point where I could hope to find words for it. It might take years. In the meantime, then, I’ll keep following folks who provide news and celebrate each time I fit together two pieces for a slightly better sense.

I do believe that what we see abroad is an extension of what we see here. Until recently, I thought mass incarceration was virtually an accident, not part of a much larger pattern. Now (as I watch an enormous multi-prison strike not be covered by MSM) I see that it is, and I have to be patient with myself for having so, so many more questions than answers. I am, at least, asking!